As some ppl asked me, I add some information about the old arena in here. That is mainly interesting for ppl that don’t have experience with abyssal deadspace or started to play after July 14 2020.
The old arena was originally introduced with the Onslaught expansion in November 2018, you can read the devblog here: Abyssal Onslaught - New Content Coming To The Abyss! | EVE Online.
This arena was super fun and exiting to do, as you never know what will enter or if you will get a fight. This opened room for some interesting tactic like going in with cheap Cruiser to grab loot and hope no one shows up. Then in Summer 2019, there was a bug that made the gate only spawn for 1-2h per day. That drived a lot of ppl away from it and after it got fixed in September 2019, there werent that many players left. This bug was active for 4 months at least and was super annoying for USTZ players. And it was me that made CCP fix this bug by simply posting into the feedback thread from the August 2019 release fast enought to get attention from CCP.
From September 2019 to January 2020 there were on average 20 fights per day in the old arena, with a peak during the crimson harvest. It was not able to recover from the bug at all. Then in February 2020 there was a series of Ddos attacks on TQ which again drived players away from it. Not many players want to risk their 5b ships when there is a serious chance for a disconnect. After that the arena recovered back to the old 20 kills per day level until the Surgical strike patch in April 2020. This patch lowered the power of resistance modules and buffed shortrange T2 ammo. This made a lot of ships viable for the old arena. A common ship that was seen was the cheap Deimos. It was able to do 1500dps and only cost 300mil. This gave even cash poor players a chance to win in the arena.
There was also a champions of the abyss tournament held by Torvald Uruz and the skillers in the Abyss event which gave skillpoints for killing NPC’s (and possibly also for entering the arena, but not sure on that anymore). During that time, the activity increased massively. There were a few houndred kills per day during that time.
After these events activity went down again to a new low point in May 2020 and then it slowly started to increase again. Even after CCP released the devblog about the new arena and the removeal of the old one there were new players trying out the arena with cheap Deimoses and Orthrus etc. You can find the devblog about the new arenas here: https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/proving-of-kybernauts-for-glorification-in-the-flow-unfolds
After the release of this Devblog on June 27 2020, the request was born (or better to say to keep the arena first). Me and almost all other ppl that enjoyed the old abyssal pvp brought the point up in the feedback thread and to the CSM that we wanted to keep the old arena as it was. And that the old arena and the new proving grounds should coexist togheter, just like the old and new map still coexist, or the POS and upwell structures. As both are complete different systems that have nothing to do with each other.
The request to bring it back then spread out all over the forum, reddit and varoius Discord servers and streams. There was also someone who sent an Evemail to over 150 players asking them to post in the forums, spread the word in their alliances etc. You can see the mail here:
After this mail, there was an influx of players that posted/liked these threads. And generally, I have the feeling that the amount of players that want the old arena back is increasing, but very slowly, this could be due to the problems the new arena had at the begin, like farming with your own alts or group events that have excessively long queue times.
And you may ask, why am I doing this event? The answer is simply: To celebrate one year of request to bring back the old arena. And you can imagine, if players send out mails to a lot of other players to raise their voice on that or bring it up to the CSM multiple times, then you can imagine that this is a topic that is very important for the community. Also, I should not forget to mention that we lost a whole community with the removeal of the old arena, many players that did the old arena left EVE shortly after the introduction of the events. It is also meant to remember these great days and to give a hommage to the Invasions that took place in Summer 2020 which lead to the fall of Niarja and introduced Pochven.
Ohh and before I forget: As all these activities take place in EUTZ and USTZ probably want to win something as well, I have decided to do a passive giveaway on Youtube in July. I will be picking 4 winners that each win an Ikitursa and a Kikimora. But to compensate I will most likely take out the Paladin and Vargur prize from the second and final liminality events.